1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a broadcast receiver which can receive broadcast by directly selecting a discretionary broadcast station from all the receivable broadcast stations. Also, the present invention relates to the broadcast receiver capable of recording a contents of the received broadcast in a recording medium and reproducing it therefrom, and further capable of accompanyingly reproducing the contents downloaded from an external computer.
2. Description of Related Art
A radio and a TV receiver are given as examples as typical devices for receiving a broadcast, specifically the broadcast of only voice (including character information in some cases), and the broadcast of voice and image, respectively. A conventional broadcast receiver of this kind is provided with a function called preset to previously select and set several receivable broadcast stations (channels) by a manufacturer or a user. However, such a preset function is only provided with preset buttons capable of allotting about 10 channels at most, for example, like an audio device for an automobile (car audio device)
When a broadcast station is newly opened, a user must preset this broadcast station (channel) by oneself so as to receive this broadcast station. Further, in the car audio device or a portable broadcast receiver, the preset broadcast station can not be received in some cases when moved to an outside a region in which this broadcast station is usually used.
In recent years, a device not only capable of receiving the broadcast but also capable of recording and reproducing contents such as a music and an image depending on a preference of a user has been widely spread. As an example of such a device, a portable music reproducing device called as a headphone stereo has been spread. Such a music reproducing device includes a reproduction only type and a rewriting type capable of recording. The recording medium of the rewriting type is gradually developed into an audio cassette tape, CD, MD, and HD to attain large capacity, and also is moved to a random accessible type. Also, in recent years, a similar device capable of recording and reproducing not only the music but also the image as a content is also in practical use.
Incidentally, in recent years, the HD has been adopted as described above as the recording medium for recording contents to be reproduced, and this makes it possible to record a significantly large amount of contents compared to a case of adopting the conventional recording medium, by using a point that a storage capacity is increased. Therefore, the Internet has been used as a source of the content, which has not been so focused before the HD is adopted.
For example, the iPod (product name: see http://WWW.apple.com/JP/ipod/specs.htm), which is a portable music reproducing device commercialized by Apple Computer, Inc. is capable of managing and sharing a music collection obtained by downloading and accumulating music data and various information that comes with the music data (for example, music title and content information such as a performer) from a particular Web site to an external computer connected with the Internet, and is capable of reproducing the music data by the computer itself. Further, by connecting such a computer and the iPod through a communication cable, the music data downloaded and accumulated from the particular Web site to the computer is transmitted to the iPod. In other words, by downloading this music data from the computer to the iPod, the iPod can be used as a portable music reproducing device, specifically as a headphone stereo. Note that there is a device of this kind accessible to the particular Web site directly through the Internet without through the computer. However, in this case also, there is no difference in connecting with the external computer (through the Internet).
The iPod has a function to display as a list the information such as a music title for specifying the music data downloaded from the computer, and reproduce the music data selected by a user from the information displayed as the list. The music data accumulated in the computer is compressively encoded by a WMA format when an OS (operating system) of the computer is Windows®, and this is converted into an AAC format by the iPod, and further is compressed and recorded in the HD, being the recording medium, as data, to make it possible to reproduce this data as needed. In addition, when the user desires a high sound quality, it is also possible to encode by the Apple Lossless format with low compression rate.
Meanwhile, as a device capable of receiving the broadcast and accessible to the content that exists on the Internet, a part of the aforementioned car audio device has the aforementioned function, and a receiving terminal described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-58013 is known.
However, as described above, the car audio device capable of receiving the broadcast is only provided with the preset button capable of allotting about 10 channels at most, for example, and when the broadcast station is newly opened, the user must preset the broadcast station by oneself so as to receive the broadcast station. Further, in the car audio device or the portable broadcast receiver, the preset broadcast station can not be received in some cases when moved to an outside the region where this broadcast station is usually used.
Further, in the prior art disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-58013, in which detailed information of the contents of the broadcast is received by a user terminal through the Internet, the information on the broadcast station itself, particularly the information on the broadcast station newly opened can not be obtained and used.
Still further, the iPod can not receive, record, and reproduce the broadcast information. Specifically, in the iPod, the contents, specifically the music data can be downloaded only from a particular Web site, thereby having a limit in collecting the content. In addition, the content whose copyright is protected can not be downloaded through the Internet, and therefore in this aspect also, the iPod has a limit in collecting the content.
Further, as described above, the iPod is capable of collecting the contents through the Internet only from the particular Web site. Therefore, as a matter of course, it is impossible to use these contents together with the contents obtained from other source (a recording medium such as a CD possessed by the user and various broadcasts, etc).
Further, in order to high-sound quality reproduction, the iPod adopts the Apple Lossless encode of its own format, whose compression rate is low, and therefore has a structure responding to a plurality of encode systems in addition to the encode system of high compression rate. This means that a plurality of decoders responding to each system is required for reproducing the music data which is compressively encoded by a plurality of systems. Therefore, a scale of circuit, a scale of mounting, and further an increase of power consumption required accordingly are caused, and it can not be denied that these factors become disadvantageous to the portable device.